Would it have been possible to adapt all of the storylines left out?

[Meera of Tarth]

49 minutes ago, The Arthur Smith said:

Have to disagree here. Quentyn is merely a plot device for Dorne and Dany's storyline to fold and Arianne is more connected to fAegon's plot which like Good Garlan explained, the plot is convoluted to be in the show. I agreed that they would make Dorne more interesting, but in terms of how they are too relate to fAegon's storyline, it's best that they do not appear on the show.

Heck if anything, the show might as well mess up Arianne by making her the "bad pussy" considering her nature.

I think that it's possible that Bronn and Tyenne's  "bad pussy relationship"  was their interpretation of Arianne's POV with Arys Oakheart (looking on the surface there is sex between two people-here in GOT the erotic scenes- and the woman has the control, but forgot about everything else).

[T and A]

The book readers (myself too) often make the mistake to assume that the show is made for us. We are not the main target. The show is a huge success because it reaches a huge part of vieweres, regardless of sex, race and age. So to answer the question of the OP, you have to consider how television works, and only that. It does not make any sense to adress it to the book, because as far as the show concerns, the books are irrellevant. Now let me argue about this: Let's say the show is done purely to entertain book readers and only a visualisation of the book:

Only Book reader:

The show will end after 8 seasons, with about 67 hours material. If you would add all of those characters, there would be no time to explore their story. It would be just a mess of short character introduction with no depth and character developments at all. It would be more of a cameo than an actual story. Even with the characters that we have, we still have problem that their story seems to be rushed. If you have seen Batman v Superman you would understand what I mean. Warner Bros. tried to please the comic book readers by adding so much characters in one movie, but it had the opposite effect. The movie was a mess for every comic book fan. It seemed overfilled, rushed and artificial.The movie tried to hard, and it imploded on its own story. That would exactly happen with GoT. 

For non Book readers: 

The main critic about GoT from a lot of viewers who have not read the books, is that the show has to many characters and that the viewers don't even remeber half of it (probably less). Just watch "honest trailers game of thrones" on youtube. It gives you a very realistic view on this matter. I watch GoT with my brother, my fiance and with some of my friends. Besides me and my fiance none of them has read the books. And it is pure horror, when for example Roose Bolton shows up, and not only don't they know his name. They spend minutes to try to remeber who he was again. And it is no wonder. According to statistics there are 3.3 new characters on avarage on every new episode. That is huge, considering that there is already a huge basic staff already. Adding Aegon, LS, Victarion and the Tyrell brothers would be pointless to them. Since the major part of the fans of the show are non-book readers, you would just loose audience. 

So from both perspectives it would make zero sence to add the characters above, with the exception of Arianne. They could have cut the sand snakes and add Arianne as the antagonist. 

[maudisdottir]

^Agree with all of this.

[Desert Fox]

On 3/4/2017 at 7:55 AM, T and A said:

The book readers (myself too) often make the mistake to assume that the show is made for us. We are not the main target. The show is a huge success because it reaches a huge part of vieweres, regardless of sex, race and age. So to answer the question of the OP, you have to consider how television works, and only that. It does not make any sense to adress it to the book, because as far as the show concerns, the books are irrellevant. Now let me argue about this: Let's say the show is done purely to entertain book readers and only a visualisation of the book:

Only Book reader:

The show will end after 8 seasons, with about 67 hours material. If you would add all of those characters, there would be no time to explore their story. It would be just a mess of short character introduction with no depth and character developments at all. It would be more of a cameo than an actual story. Even with the characters that we have, we still have problem that their story seems to be rushed. If you have seen Batman v Superman you would understand what I mean. Warner Bros. tried to please the comic book readers by adding so much characters in one movie, but it had the opposite effect. The movie was a mess for every comic book fan. It seemed overfilled, rushed and artificial.The movie tried to hard, and it imploded on its own story. That would exactly happen with GoT. 

For non Book readers: 

The main critic about GoT from a lot of viewers who have not read the books, is that the show has to many characters and that the viewers don't even remeber half of it (probably less). Just watch "honest trailers game of thrones" on youtube. It gives you a very realistic view on this matter. I watch GoT with my brother, my fiance and with some of my friends. Besides me and my fiance none of them has read the books. And it is pure horror, when for example Roose Bolton shows up, and not only don't they know his name. They spend minutes to try to remeber who he was again. And it is no wonder. According to statistics there are 3.3 new characters on avarage on every new episode. That is huge, considering that there is already a huge basic staff already. Adding Aegon, LS, Victarion and the Tyrell brothers would be pointless to them. Since the major part of the fans of the show are non-book readers, you would just loose audience. 

So from both perspectives it would make zero sence to add the characters above, with the exception of Arianne. They could have cut the sand snakes and add Arianne as the antagonist. 

 

It's easy for huge fans to underestimate how complicated and obscure some of these characters are even to normal book readers. My wife read the books before I did. But she isn't obsessed with the series. She read them, enjoyed them, and moved on. She doesn't remember small characters like Garlan and Willis. She even forgot that Asha was captured by Stannis (despite it being a pretty major storyline). And she's not some idiot, she's well educated and well read.

Another thing book readers have a hard time understanding is that show watchers don't know these characters at all. When a book reader sees a character, they already know their characterization from the books. The show has to develop that stuff slowly. A show watcher gets zero value out of 5 minutes of Victarion screen time. You'd need at least 20 minutes spread over several eps to develop him.

The show should have cut out dorne entirely. It's not relevant if they are skipping Aegon and the show did a horrific job of adapting it because they rushed it and oversimplified it.

[Victarious2]

On 3/6/2017 at 11:24 AM, Desert Fox said:

It's easy for huge fans to underestimate how complicated and obscure some of these characters are even to normal book readers. My wife read the books before I did. But she isn't obsessed with the series. She read them, enjoyed them, and moved on. She doesn't remember small characters like Garlan and Willis. She even forgot that Asha was captured by Stannis (despite it being a pretty major storyline). And she's not some idiot, she's well educated and well read.

Another thing book readers have a hard time understanding is that show watchers don't know these characters at all. When a book reader sees a character, they already know their characterization from the books. The show has to develop that stuff slowly. A show watcher gets zero value out of 5 minutes of Victarion screen time. You'd need at least 20 minutes spread over several eps to develop him.

The show should have cut out dorne entirely. It's not relevant if they are skipping Aegon and the show did a horrific job of adapting it because they rushed it and oversimplified it.

They also barely showed Dorne in Season 6 and could possibly be killing off the Sand Snakes and Ellaria in S7 which really confuses me as to why they'd include it in the first place.  D&D even said in an interview that Dorne/House Martell was very important to the end-game.  How could it be based on how they've executed it??

[Desert Fox]

18 hours ago, Victarious2 said:

They also barely showed Dorne in Season 6 and could possibly be killing off the Sand Snakes and Ellaria in S7 which really confuses me as to why they'd include it in the first place.  D&D even said in an interview that Dorne/House Martell was very important to the end-game.  How could it be based on how they've executed it??

And they originally weren't even going to do Dorne in S5. I have no idea how they can very important based on the show execution. Just adding 20k troops to Dany's army doesn't matter.

In the books it doesn't even seem like they are going to side with Dany.

[Adam_Up_Bxtch]

On 2/27/2017 at 2:36 PM, Good Guy Garlan said:

• Jon Connington and Young Griff: Nope. That plot line is convoluted as hell in the books as it is, they would've had to set up a million things for it to make sense.
• Garlan and Willas: No. They may be important in Winds as Martin says, but so far the story works just fine without them. 

Young Griff - Honestly Varys' motivations in Season 1 make no sense without Young Griff. Without Young Griff this means Varys and Illyrio were truly going to try and put Viserys (arguably a worse candidate than Robert) on the throne with the help of the Dothraki, which would never have worked, and after Viserys is killed Varys is willing to send assassins after Daenerys even though she is now the last living Targaryen (She's not but to Varys she is) on the off chance that Jorah would be in love with her and stop said assassination? They address this in Season 5 as Varys' reason for sending assassins being "He did what he had to survive" and yes Varys had to survive long enough to set plans in motion but that doesn't excuse allowing the potential end to the dynasty you are attempting to help retake the throne. Unless that "pardon" Jorah got in Season 1 was actually Varys telling Jorah to save Daenerys from the assassins coming for her but the way they explain it Varys left it up to chance which is stupid in my opinion and not in character for someone as intelligent and meticulous as Varys. I will admit that I like the TV shows version of Varys choosing to spirit Tyrion away as he'd be a valuable asset to Daenerys apposed to Book version where Jaime forces Varys to help him (unless of course Varys was just pretending he was being forced against his will to keep suspicions off of himself and actually was planning to free Tyrion before Jaime approached him about it). Still I think keeping Young Griff out of the show has messed up Varys' early show arc, and a mistake I think introducing another "Targaryen" would of been great, especially with the right set up. Plus it would of gave Tyrion something to do besides sit around Dany's city twiddling his thumbs doing nothing. We could of gotten to see the the river rhoyne and so much more of esso between the free cities & slaver's bay.

Garlan & Willas - Being the lore purist that I am it bothers me greatly that Olenna (who is a Redwyne, not a Tyrell) has any say in the cementing of alliances for House Tyrell or the Reach. They should of cast Willas and/or Garlan, but as cousins since in the show Loras was Mace's only son and heir to the Reach. Not a fan of this whole "Women will inherit Westeros" when half of them are being putting in power just because the producers want a "familiar face" to be shown instead of casting new actors for character's that would realistically inherit said lands when GoT's budget is ridiculously high now, and don't even get me started on Dorne, that shit is a lost cause to me. For a show that's central conflict earlier was centered around "Rights of Ascension" and "Blood ties" they sure as shit have thrown all that out the window. I'd be behind Women taking over power roles in Westeros if they'd do it in a realistic way. Like they did with characters like Lyanna Mormont & Yara to an extent she doesn't exactly have the Iron Isles yet but she could realistically be getting them sooner or later (unless she dies of course) and it'd make sense, same with Daenerys. Cersei could realistically take the IT I guess, but there should be riots in the streets after she just blew up the sept with wildifre. Instead it's like Star Wars where everybody is standing in straight lines watching as she approaches her throne and yelling "Long may she reign" like they are all mindless robots. Although they may not know she did it and she could use this to her advantage as she could pass the blame onto her enemies and rally the people to her. Still there could be complete chaos in KL since a huge amount of people just died, including the King mind you.

 

Sorry I just went off on a massive tangent lol

[lancerman]

Jon Connington and Young Griff- meh. It would take alot of work for an unknown payoff. It would really come off as a "who the hell are these people". Also the fact that they aligned Dorne with Dany almost immediatly circumvents his storyline in my opinion. 

Lady Stoneheart- they could have, but it would have been rather pointless to have done it without adding a ton of filler to justify bringing a main character back. I said in another thread, they could do the whole current LSH storyline in the first two episodes of next season and we wouldn't miss anything. 

Arianne and Quentyn- You could just do the same Dorne plot with Arianne. Quentin is unnecessary. The whole plot feels like a complication to align Dorne with Dany.  Too much of it ties to Jon Con and Griff. You have to bypass the whole marriage thing and just have Doran's speech to mean an alliance to Dany with no strings attached. But that's about it. 

Victarion and Aeron- With some reworking maybe. But we essentially have the same result. 

Garlan and Willas- Willas hasn't even been seen yet. Only mentioned. Garlan would have been killed at the Sept in this seasons finale. So who cares?

[RhaenysBee]

No it would not have been possible, not in 8 season. 

SHOULD all the storylines of a book be adapted in a show? No. 

Should all the storylines of this be adapted in this show? GOD NO. 

In truth, more characters and storylines should have been cut. Why? Because they wasted a lot of time and extra characters on storylines that don't move the main plot forward. The general audience doesn't care about the ten billion subplots of each character (hell, I don't care about it either and I read the books) since the main plot is complicated enough and they remember about a quarter of the characters they have seen in the 6 seasons. That used to make me mad (sometimes still does, a little) but then I tried to make my family watch it who had zero GoT history. 

My sister can sort of follow along the main plot and has an opinion about main characters and once in every cases she even spots social/political/emotional conflicts that had a whole entire story in the books. My mom was okay until around the middle of season 2, then it got too complicated and she didn't care. She had a couple favorites but couldn't connect them to the main plot. My dad hated it at first then sort of got into it and started asking for the next episode. By season 3 he didn't remember who was Robert and had zero idea what Daenerys had to do with him. He lasted until the very end of season 5 where I had to tell him there's no "next episode" because it's yet to come out on DVD (and he wouldn't watch the English version of season 6).Then he asked, Okay, never mind, but how does it end then? When I had no answer to that he said that was stupid and put on a football match. Which I understand. Later he concluded that it's not bad but too long and too complicated and he thinks the blond girl should be queen with the dwarf.

My friends are slightly better at keeping up with the story because they are a little most invested and some of them have even read (some of) the books. But even they struggle with linking characters' faces with their story when they have been off screen for a whole season or longer.

You can say a lot of things about D&D but they made (almost) all the right decisions when it came to cutting/merging storylines. Cutting Aeron and Victarion, LS, Jon Connington and FAegon, the no name Tyrell brothers, Quentin and company, Manderly, kindly man, Green Grace were all very good decisions. Merging Sansa with Jeyne was also a very good idea, it is a shame they botched writing it. I wouldn't have minded if they cut Dorne entirely but if they were going to do a second generation Dorne, that should have been ONE woman, Arianne (plus Doran) and not four. Aero Hotah, Qyburn, FrankenGregor, Septon Meribald/Rey, Iron Bank, Thenns, Selyse, Sandsnakes, Mace Tyrell would never have made the cut if it was up to me. 

[ftheking]

LS would have just been awesome TV and VERY memorable. No one would have been confused about that. She might not be absolutely "needed" for the plot, but she would have been entertaining, as hell, and in the end it's the job of this show to entertain. It's ridiculous to act as if every cut character is an automatic win just in itself.

Cutting the sand snakes, yes, that would have been a plus.

I fully approve of no Victarion, but I wish they kept Jeyne. Even a showatcher could easily notice that married kingslayer Sansa can't just go around marrying Lannister allies as she pleases. And if she can, why the hell was she hiding before? "No one pays attention to plot" is just not a satisfying explanation for me, I'm sorry.

I'm also dissapointed about the lack of Aegon, but if he ends up not mattering, I guess they might be in the right.

I fully assumed Jorah was ordered by Varys to protect Dany and this didn't depend on his personal feelings. Isn't it the same in the books? Doesn't Varys want a very alive Dany to marry Aegon? 

[Dragonsbone]

This is my first post on this forum, so first of all, hello to everyone.  Since I have not read everything on this forum, I am sure that I might repeat something that has already been said. So forgive me that. 

As far as the Show concerns, I am very glad that they have not decided to include the said characters.

Lady Stoneheart: She is barely in the books. At the epilogue of A storm of swords, she does nothing except revealing herself and ordering to kill a Frey. Then again in one chapter in A Feast for Crows, where she just catches Brienne, says nothing, and orders to kill Brienne, just to release her and demanding Jamie. In A Dance with Dragons we learn that she has not killed Brienne, but she does not show up in the book directly. That's it regarding Lady Stoneheart. That is not much film material. Well, that is barely film material. Maximum 10 Minutes screen time. We don't know whats her journey in the future, but it can not be much more than taking some revenge and killing Freys. But you dont need her, to do this in the show. Why resurecting a dead character just for some revenge stuff? That is not solid story telling. Also to be honest, her story arch does not fit in the overall story in the books, to beginn with. Therefore I am glad that the writers decided to cut her out. 

Victarion: Although I kinda like him in the books, he will probably only serve as a Uber-Driver in the books. His role is to bring Daenerys to westeros. Again, there are a lot of characters already anticipated in the show, who can do that. In this case Theon and Yara. Victarion is a dead man in the books. That is for sure. Would he contribute to the show: storywise not, onlx through his character maybe. But then again, there are dozens of interesting characters, no need for another one.

Aegon/Connington: It seems clear now, since the show cut them, that they are irrelevant for the End-Game. I can not prove it of course, but if they were, they would have been involved, at least Aegon. But since I have no Idea what their story in the books will be, I may be wrong here. I have a very high opinion about GRRM, and I hope their arch is not just to have another Dance of Dragons.

Ariane Martell: regarding her, I have to say that I would have loved here being in the show instead of these horible "Bad Pusseys". She could do everything that they have done, but it would sound believable.

 

[Adam_Up_Bxtch]

On 3/27/2017 at 4:23 PM, ftheking said:

I fully assumed Jorah was ordered by Varys to protect Dany and this didn't depend on his personal feelings. Isn't it the same in the books? Doesn't Varys want a very alive Dany to marry Aegon? 

In the show Varys' little bird tells Jorah that he has a "Royal Pardon" and that "He can go home now." They made it seem like the boy handed Jorah his pardon and left saying nothing about stopping Daenerys' incoming assassination making it look like he decided to save her out of passion instead of being ordered to.

[Newstar]

If Arianne's ASOIAF storyline merges with Aegon's, whom D&D had decided to cut for what I think are pretty obvious reasons, then I don't know what D&D could have really done with her after the botched Myrcella crowning (assuming that they had decided to keep that in the show as well). If you eliminate Aegon, then that seems to eliminate Arianne as well. As for Quentyn, he's a plot device to ensure Dorne allies with Aegon. If the show eliminates Aegon, there's no point to Quentyn's character. 

...I think we can all agree that the Dorne storyline was a big mess, but it sounds as if D&D had intended to cut Dorne altogether and only wrote it back in when Bryan Cogman suggested it for the Jaime storyline, so it wasn't very well thought out at all. I suppose the original idea was to have Jaime doing something else for Season 5, but he couldn't be in KL when Cersei got arrested and forced to do the Walk of Shame, so they had to ship him off somewhere, and I guess Cogman convinced them that Dorne was as good a place as any.

I don't think there was ever a time when D&D seriously considered including Aegon. I think Aegon was always going to get written out, since there's no way they would have made it to their long-planned 70 episodes without cutting him and all related storylines.

On 3/22/2017 at 7:42 PM, Victarious2 said:

They also barely showed Dorne in Season 6 and could possibly be killing off the Sand Snakes and Ellaria in S7 which really confuses me as to why they'd include it in the first place.  

Some have speculated that they were planning on doing more with Dorne in Season 6, with the same end result (Doran and Trystane dead and a Sand Snake takeover), since Alexander Siddig said that he was originally contracted for more episodes, and only cut off the Dorne storyline in light of the almost universally negative reception in Season 5 to the Dorne storyline. They decided to cut their losses and expedite Doran's demise rather than waste more screentime on a storyline everyone hated.

Quote

D&D even said in an interview that Dorne/House Martell was very important to the end-game.  

Do you have a cite? I don't recall D&D saying that.

On 3/23/2017 at 2:00 PM, Desert Fox said:

And they originally weren't even going to do Dorne in S5. I have no idea how they can very important based on the show execution. Just adding 20k troops to Dany's army doesn't matter.

In the books it doesn't even seem like they are going to side with Dany.

Yeah, Dorne seems poised to support Aegon in the books, but 1) Aegon isn't in the show, 2) the Dorne/Aegon alliance is likely to end with the deaths of everyone involved, and 3) it doesn't matter what they do with them in the show if they all wind up dead in the books in a plot that has been cut from the show.

Aside from the Dorne issue, I agree that including all the storylines left out wouldn't work. TV critics were already complaining about the show being too complex and too difficult to follow when the show had reached its peak in terms of the number of separate plotlines, to say nothing of show viewers who have trouble keeping everyone straight as it is. Even readers who enjoyed AFFC and ADWD have conceded that there are a lot of extra plots added with very little in the way of substantial resolution or payoff. If you think show viewers would be MORE forgiving of such meanderings and character additions than fanatical book fans who have every reason to cut GRRM slack when he wanders off the plot for the umpteenth time, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

Now, I agree that there's a conversation to be had about the wisdom of the specific decisions that D&D took to slenderize and collapse the book plots for TV: whatever the Dorne storyline was supposed to be, the Sansa rape debacle, dispatching Stannis at the end of Season 5, etc. etc. I'm not convinced that the way they went about it was the best possible method they could have chosen. They seem fixated on collapsing and converging storylines so that POV book characters wind up in the same plots as soon as possible rather than wandering around on their own with their own cast of characters. Sometimes it works very well (Tyrion/Dany, Davos/Jon, Brienne/Sansa), and sometimes it doesn't (Sansa/Theon).  However, I think their overall choice to take a machete to two very bloated, largely plotless books is above reproach.

I'm not convinced that Lady Stoneheart needed to be cut from the TV adaptation, unless D&D thought it was really important to plug Brienne into the Northern storyline as soon as possible for endgame purposes, but I do believe that Aegon had to go, because once the decision was made to eliminate him, a lot of ADWD and TWOW and a lot of characters (Arianne, who will likely bring him into a Dorne alliance, and Quentyn, whose death will fuel the Dorne-Aegon alliance) were eliminated with him, simplifying the storyline in just the way that D&D needed.

As for the other characters mentioned--Victarion, Aeron, Garlan and Willas Tyrell--they are expendable, given the choices D&D have made. Dany got her ships without Victarion. Aeron seems to exist largely to convince us of how eeeeeeevil Euron is. GRRM has hinted that Garlan and Willas Tyrell will be important down the line--likely as it concerns the Ironborn's attack on the Reach--but if that storyline goes away, so does the need for Garlan and Willas. The show also seemed to hint that the Tyrells are pretty much done for in any event, even if Olenna is still alive as of the end of Season 6.

[Lucius Lovejoy]

Mostly I agree with @RhaenysB that D&D by and large made good decisions on what to cut.  I agree that cutting Aegon and the "no name" Tyrell brothers were good ideas.  I also think cutting Lady Stoneheart was a good idea because there are already too many resurrections and unless she proves critical to the Brienne/Jaime dynamic (Brienne presents Jaime to LSH to be killed... if Brienne sacrifices her own life for Jaime you don't need LSH to show that) it's just extra screen time for a cool but unimportant character.  With Dorne I agree that Arianne should have been portrayed instead of the Sandsnakes, and Ellaria should have been portrayed as book Ellaria instead of as some crazy raving bloodthirsty pyscho.  I do think the Iron Born plot should have been different, and @Stannis is the man....nis is absolutely right that the northern plot for Stannis and Jon needed changing.  I wrote like a 10,000 words on what I'd change before deciding it was way too much, so long story short Arianne goes to Daenerys (girl power, like Yara meeting Daenerys), Yara becomes Stannis' prisoner and win/lose Theon and Sansa are re-united with Yara and Davos either smuggles them back to the wall (if they lose) or they install her in Winterfell and wait for Jon (if they win).  Mel and family stay at wall, visions of Sansa on a dying horse turn out to be Alys Karstark, Jon marries Alys to Tormund and warns Stannis of the Karstarks being with the Boltons, Jon gets pink letter and decides to move south, for the watch happens and then Mel (with or without burning Shireen) does what she needs to to resurrect Jon and the story continues.  Iron Born Kingsmoot in season 5 with a Vic/Aeron composite character warrior/priest introduced, Euron raids the Reach to give Cersei/Mace/Olenna some shit to worry about other than the Faith Militant and introduce Euron as the evil dude he is by having him imprison and abuse the Vic/Aeron composite after a feast (with the naked noble ladies serving) following Vic/Aeron getting a few victories.